The Businessman

Though subtitled "A Tale of Terror," this misanthropic ghost-story is far too cute and campy to make anybody's heartbeat quicken - but far too unpleasant to be savored as an afterlife lark. The title character is fat sex maniac Bob Glandier of St. Paul, who recently murdered his runaway wife Giselle at the Lady Luck Motel in Las Vegas. And no one suspects Glandier of the killing, including Giselle's terminally ill mother Joy-Ann, whose house Glandier hopes to inherit. Then, however, Giselle's ghost, after some graphic grave-mouldering, re-enters the earthly world - thanks to Joy-Ann's timely demise while visiting the cemetery. ("Just as Joy-Ann died, Giselle's voice shrilled delightedly in her ears: Mummy, I'm free! I'm free! Oh, thank you so much.") And, while Joy-Ann enters a sit-corn Heaven of escalators, Home Box Office, and ballroom dancing, Giselle finds herself forced to haunt her killer-husband. Her first visitation culminates in some messy sex (potato-chip dip in the pubic hair), after which Glandier muses: "if it was a ghost he'd been fucking, then good for him and good for the ghost." Despite ghostdom, Giselle gets pregnant and gives near-instant birth to a shape-shifting monster - whose total loyalty belongs to Glandier, his loathsome father. ("You,re a businessman, right? From you Linherit pimples, pus, corruption. Shit.") Meanwhile, Giselle's gay brother Bing comes home to St. Paul for Joy-Ann's funeral - so Giselle, with help from the alcoholic ghost of suicide-poet John Berryman, tries to give Bing clues that will pin her murder on the vile Glandier. And eventually, though the monster-child commits several nasty murders to protect Glandier, the "homophobic" businessman will get his just deserts: not just a fiery death. . . but also an eternity as resident prisoner of "the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bathroom" in Bing's gay-activist center. Science-fiction veteran Disch is a talented, stylish writer - with a genuine gift for offbeat creepiness. (His evocations of ghost-dom are often striking.) Here, however, to an even greater extent than in On Wings of Song (1979), his work is cruelly uneven - swamped by its ugly subtext (an anti-heterosexual hysteria), marred by shtick and preciousness. (Kirkus Reviews)